Public Radio Showcase

Wednesdays at 8pm and Sundays at 10pm on WMRA

Are humans basically selfish, or basically giving? There’s a widespread assumption that you have to offer people incentives to do good deeds and threaten punishment to stop them from doing evil deeds. But the way people act in the real world often contradicts that idea. Humans may actually have been shaped by evolution to care about each other, to share, and to cooperate. The Really Big Question explores this concept with researchers and everyday people about why we cooperate and share....

When environmental scientist Jane Lubchenco served as administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from 2009 to 2013, the U.S. was experiencing the most extreme four years of weather in its history. With 770 major tornados, 70 Atlantic hurricanes, 6 major floods, 3 tsunamis, record-breaking snowfall, drought, heat waves and wildfires, climate change started to become part of the conversation. “I think that that extreme weather actually changed a lot of peoples’...

Is the college of the future online? With the popularity of MOOCs (massive open online courses) and the availability of online degree programs at a fraction of their on-campus price, we are experiencing an exciting experiment in higher education. Does the traditional classroom stand a chance? Will online education be the great equalizer, or is a campus-based college experience still necessary? Listen and learn more here .

SNOW SNOW SNOW --- It’s been a big year for that in our area, but around the world the mountain snowpack is declining which is bad news for ski areas and the water supply for those who depend on the run-off. On this edition of Climate One you'll hear from the author of DEEP: The Story of Skiing and the Future of Snow, a professional snowboarder, and a professor of hydroclimatology. Also on this program, a rise in Dengue Fever is linked to the rise in global temperatures and we learn how...

Disarming Syria. Asylum for Edward Snowden. Arming Iran. Deploying troops to Crimea. Is Vladimir Putin flexing his muscles, while our own president fades into the background of world politics, or is it all a global game of smoke and mirrors? Russia is one of the world’s largest oil producers and has the power of veto on the U.N. Security Council, but it remains an authoritarian state, rife with corruption and economic struggles. Is our toxic relationship something to worry about, or is Putin...

In this episode of America Abroad, we look at whether government intervention helps or harms entrepreneurs. And we examine what the United States can learn from the success and failures of other countries. Listen and learn more here.

1 2 3 4 5 6 The US is considered one of the top five places in the world to do business according to World Bank rankings. We look at why countries like Singapore and New Zealand have scored even higher and why Israel, known as the "start-up nation", only ranks 38th. - See more at: http://www.americaabroad.org/radio#sthash.DhhIZ7YP.dpuf In this episode of America Abroad, we look at whether government intervention helps or harms entrepreneurs. And we examine what the United States can learn...

Hosted by legendary Sound of Philadelphia (TSOP) music producer Kenny Gamble, GOING BLACK: THE LEGACY OF PHILLY SOUL RADIO, will examine the legacy of Black radio in Philadelphia with a special focus on the legendary radio station WDAS. Starting in the 1950s, Black radio stations became the pulse of African-American communities and a megaphone for people of color during the civil rights and Black power movements. Stations like WDAS in Philadelphia, WDIA in Memphis, WWRL and WBLS in NYC, WHUR...

U sually during Black History Month, we remember civil rights icons and reflect on their legacy. But over the past couple of years, SOTRU has met a new generation of African American leaders, people you may not see on TV specials or making nationally acclaimed speeches. Most of these men and women are on the front lines of their communities, rolling up their sleeves and diving in to what can be very unglamorous work. Listen and learn more here .

D uring a month selected to celebrate “history,” we certainly are treated to a lot of the same familiar stories: the battles won for Civil Rights, the glory of Martin Luther King Jr.’s words, the hardships endured by slaves. And as important as those narratives are for us to collectively remember, many others get lost in trumpeting the same heroic tales. In this hour, State of the Re:Union zeroes in some of those alternate narratives, ones edited out of the mainstream imagining of Black...

With the disastrous launch of the HealthCare.gov website, critics of the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” were given more fuel for the fire. Is this political hot potato's inevitability once again at stake? And is the medical community really on board with the law, or resisting (rewriting?) it from the sidelines?

This hour of Radiolab dives into the messy mystery in the middle of us. What's going on down there? We stick our hand in a cow stomach, get a window into our core through the story of a human science experiment, listen in on the surprising back-and-forth between our gut and our brain, and talk to a man who kind of went out of his mind when a medical procedure left him (for a little while) gutless.

The greatest mysteries all have a shadowy figure at the center-someone who sets things in motion and holds the key to how the rest of the story unfolds. In epidemiology, this central character is known as Patient Zero-the case at the heart of an outbreak.